Editing Expressionism (section)

====Drama====
{{Main|Expressionism (theatre)}}
[[Oskar Kokoschka]]'s 1909 playlet, ''Murderer, The Hope of Women'' is often termed the first expressionist drama. In it, an unnamed man and woman struggle for dominance. The man brands the woman; she stabs and imprisons him. He frees himself and she falls dead at his touch. As the play ends, he slaughters all around him (in the words of the text) "like mosquitoes." The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity all would become characteristic of later expressionist plays.<ref name="Graver1995">{{cite book|author=David Graver|title=The Aesthetics of Disturbance: Anti-art in Avant-garde Drama|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ub69UFnyuSwC|access-date=29 May 2018|year=1995|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=0-472-10507-8|page=65}}</ref> The German composer [[Paul Hindemith]] created an [[Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen|operatic version]] of this play, which premiered in 1921.<ref name="Stewart1991">{{cite book|author=John Lincoln Stewart|title=Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_-5RqK8C__ysC|access-date=29 May 2018|year=1991|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-07014-1|page=82}}</ref>

Expressionism was a dominant influence on early 20th-century German theatre, of which [[Georg Kaiser]] and [[Ernst Toller]] were the most famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included [[Reinhard Sorge]], [[Walter Hasenclever]], [[Hans Henny Jahnn]], and [[Arnolt Bronnen]]. Important precursors were the Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind. During the 1920s, Expressionism enjoyed a brief period of influence in American theatre, including the early modernist plays by [[Eugene O'Neill]] (''[[The Hairy Ape]]'', ''[[The Emperor Jones]]'' and ''The Great God Brown''), [[Sophie Treadwell]] (''[[Machinal]]'') and [[Elmer Rice]] (''[[The Adding Machine]]'').<ref name="Law2013">{{cite book|author=Jonathan Law|title=The Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theatre|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oXMsAQAAQBAJ|access-date=29 May 2018|date=28 October 2013|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-1-4081-4591-3}}</ref>

Expressionist plays often dramatise the spiritual awakening and sufferings of their protagonists. Some utilise an [[Epic poetry|episodic]] [[dramatic structure]] and are known as ''Stationendramen'' (station plays), modeled on the presentation of the suffering and death of [[Jesus]] in the [[Stations of the Cross]]. Strindberg had pioneered this form with his autobiographical trilogy ''[[To Damascus]]''. These plays also often dramatise the struggle against bourgeois values and established authority, frequently personified by the Father. In Sorge's ''The Beggar'', (''Der Bettler''), for example, the young hero's mentally ill father raves about the prospect of mining the riches of Mars and is finally poisoned by his son. In Bronnen's ''[[Parricide]]'' (''Vatermord''), the son stabs his tyrannical father to death, only to have to fend off the frenzied sexual overtures of his mother.<ref name="Styan1983">{{cite book|author=J. L. Styan|title=Modern Drama in Theory and Practice: Volume 3, Expressionism and Epic Theatre|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sBSKmRjbbU4C|access-date=29 May 2018|date=9 June 1983|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-29630-4|page=4}}</ref>

In Expressionist drama, the speech may be either expansive and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic. Director [[Leopold Jessner]] became famous for his expressionistic productions, often set on stark, steeply raked flights of stairs (having borrowed the idea from the [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] director and designer, [[Edward Gordon Craig]]). Staging was especially important in Expressionist drama, with directors forgoing the illusion of reality to block actors in as close to two-dimensional movement. Directors also made heavy use of lighting effects to create stark contrast and as another method to heavily emphasize emotion and convey the play or a scene's message.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Fulton|first=A. R.|date=1944|title=Expressionism: Twenty Years After|jstor=27537525|journal=The Sewanee Review|volume=52|issue=3|pages=398–399}}</ref>

German expressionist playwrights:
* [[Georg Kaiser]] (1878)
* [[Ernst Toller]] (1893–1939)
* [[Hans Henny Jahnn]] (1894–1959)
* [[Reinhard Sorge]] (1892–1916)
* [[Bertolt Brecht]] (1898–1956)

Playwrights influenced by Expressionism:
* [[Seán O'Casey]] (1880–1964)<ref>Furness, pp.89–90.</ref>
* [[Eugene O'Neill]] (1885–1953)
* [[Elmer Rice]] (1892–1967)
* [[Tennessee Williams]] (1911–1983)<ref>Stokel, p.1.</ref>
* [[Arthur Miller]] (1915–2005)
* [[Samuel Beckett]] (1906–1989)<ref>Stokel, p.1; Lois Oppenheimer, ''The Painted Word: Samuel Beckett's Dialogue with Art''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, pp.74, 126–7, 128; Jessica Prinz, "Resonant Images: Beckett and German Expressionism", in ''Samuel Beckett and the Arts: Music, Visual Arts, and Non-Print Media'', ed. Lois Oppenheim. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999.</ref>